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Big Changes Coming To The Cult

Those of you who have been here for a while know that The Cult has gone through many iterations over the years. From about 1999-2002 we were just a Chuck Palahniuk fansite. But that changed in 2003 with the first incarnation of our Writers' Workshop. Over the next few years, we broadened into features, interviews and reviews.

For as many fans that loved these new eclectic offerings, there seemed to be twice as many that were confused by it. "Wait, why aren't we talking about Tyler Durden?" You might laugh at that, but it's true. There's just a large, large group of Chuck fans that want us just talking about Chuck. After all, it is his official fan site. And we understand and respect that.

It was because of this growing non-Palahniuk content, that we first began to seriously consider a stand-alone site. About one year ago we began discussing the creation of a new site dedicated to support this type of content. We discussed the idea with Chuck and he was a full supporter of this decision. If you know anything about Chuck, you know how modest he is. He cares about his fans and fellow authors alike.

With this in mind we set out with a new goal; to appease the reader just interested in Chuck Palahniuk content, and to give the visitor to our site who likes these other offerings... more.

On October 1st we are launching a new website called LitReactor.com. Many of you who follow us on our social media feeds already might know about this endeavor. It's been in the works for over a year now and we're extremely excited about it.

The site has three major sections:

A brand new version of our Writers Workshop with more features and tools

Monthly online Classes taught by industry professionals and published authors

LitReactor will be a destination for writers to improve their craft; a haven for readers to geek out about books; and a platform to kickstart your writing goals. While the site launches on October 1st, we already have a splash page set up where you can see advance content, watch some fun videos, and sign-up for a Newsletter which gets you an insane, 8 pg PDF compendium loaded to the brim with writing advice from people like Neil Gaiman, Bret Easton Ellis, Craig Clevenger, Max Barry, Stephen Graham Jones, Amy Hempel, Jack Ketchum, Holiday Reinhorn, Christopher Bram, Steve Erickson and of course, Chuck himself.

What Does This Mean For Existing Premium Members?

At first, not much will change here. The Workshop featured on this site will be closed for any new submissions and will exist in an archived state for a duration. Anyone who has an active Premium Membership here will be invited to transfer their membership over to LitReactor's workshop. This invite will come via a newsletter sent out to all our Premium Members. So please don't contact us about this. We will contact you. Soon. Those who aren't interested in this, can contact us and be offered a prorated refund.

Chuck has given us permission to move his 36 writing essays, as well as his Q&A fan sessions, to LitReactor where they will not only be easier to locate on the site, but will also be viewable as HTML. Yep, this means you can finally print them, as well as read them from your mobile devices. (cue: collective sigh of relief)

Not long after LitReactor gets going, we have plans to do some awesome new upgrades to The Cult, which will put tools in place for fans to upload their own content. The site will continue to exist as the largest and most robust author site online, but it will get better, as we streamline it to focus more on all-things-Chuck.

For now, if you have any questions about this, you can direct them below in our comments section. If you have questions specifically about LitReactor, head over to our Facebook page and post them on our wall and we'll do our best to answer them.

If you were specifically holding out and waiting for new Class offerings at The Cult, rest assured we have a full-schedule planned at LitReactor. October classes have just been firmed up. So if interested, hurry and sign up for our newsletter to get the latest details on when these classes will go live, who will be teaching them and what great content you'll be getting.

Thank you all for your continued support. The future for both sites is very bright.

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Important Disclaimer: Although this is Chuck Palahniuk’s official website, we are in essence, more an official ‘fansite.’ Chuck Palahniuk himself does not own nor run this website. Nor did he create it. It was started by Dennis Widmyer, who is the webmaster and editor of most of the content. Chuck Palahniuk himself should not be held accountable nor liable for any of the content posted on this website. The opinions expressed in the news updates, content pages and message boards are not the opinions of Chuck Palahniuk nor his publishers. If you are trying to contact Chuck Palahniuk, sending emails to this website will not get you there. You should instead, take the more professional route of contacting his publicist at Doubleday.